Like the first 2 centuries of our republic when gays were homosexuals in closets and considered, like adultery, as devient from the norm or decent by the majority of voters; when wedlock was something not to be outside of and when aids was a roll of digestion helps or folks who helped others?

You see Buz, ma dear, this is exactly what I"m talking about. The majority does not have the "right" to legislate away the "rights" of others. A right is a right, whether you're part of the majority or a minority of one.

Like when the mob American voters, including the founders who considered the right to pray in government or schools to be ok with the Constitution?

Show me one spot in American government or public education where one's right to pray has been taken away. I advise you to make a call immediately to the ACLU.

If a majority of people in your district thought it was a good idea to stone you you would be ok with that? That would be direct democracy and an example of "mob rule."

If punishment was for selfishly snuffing out the life of a fellow citizen, I might want to move into that district so as for me and my family to live in peace and quiet.

If it was for adultery, I'd likely move to a different district where the voters dealt with the situation like Jesus did. "Let him who is without guilt throw the first stone."

You obviously missed the part where I specified stoning "YOU." You and your family are going about your business, breaking no laws that you are aware of. A majority of your peers decide that, for whatever reason, they don't like something you do. They vote to stone you. I take it you'd be ok with that? It is the majority making a decision. Who cares about your rights? Those don't matter.

...err...no....I just mentioned Skype as aone of many technology applications that currently make mass-interaction available.

Right. Fine. However, if the examples you provided are not what you are actually suggesting we use, then you have effectively provided absolutely nothing.

You have no argument.

I have a very clear idea of how it should work I just haven't got the time and energy to write all down in full technical glory on this forum. The point -which you keep ignoring- is that the technology already exists. Now we can start arguing about what would be the best way to implement the system but the fact remains: *the enabling technology for direct democracy is right here, right now!*

So you keep saying, but you are reticent about telling us what it actually is. If you are not advocating using "things like chat, social networks, mobile phones, tele-conferencing, SMS, IM, Twitter, Skype, GPS, etc." (none of which are currently secure enough to be used for voting) and you refuse to tell us what you would use, you are wasting your time.

You have no argument.

No, the public wouldn't decide on the wording of bills, the public would decide on which issues need to be voted on, the wording would be crafted by people with appropriate skills and the public woud then vote to approve/reject the fully-worded proposal.

So in actual fact, you would be creating another oligarchy, an elite group with enhanced powers above the ordinary citizen, just like you have objected to in previous messages.

Drafting bills places people in a very powerful position. The opportunity exists to bury controversial or self-serving details inside unrelated bills (much more easily done with your avalanche of direct votes).

Your idea of public vote deciding what goes to public vote is also pretty bizarre. Who gets to decide which issues go into the public vote that decides what goes into the public vote? You have created an infinite regression, where nothing will ever get done. You have created Wiki-government.

I don't work for, nor represent, the government.

Don't take the piss Legend. A project on that scale could only be carried out by a large company or government. You are not going to do it on your days off. The fact remains that IT projects of this scale (in fact, of much more modest scale) have routinely been disastrous and have run into the billions. Your pipe dream would dwarf these projects and yet you won't even explain how it works.

You have no argument.

No, I want to link every person in Britain. Broadband isn't the only available communications medium. Think of the cross-coverage between broadband, GPRS (mobile phone) and digital TV.

All of which have been around a long time now and are not even close to saturation. The cost of this project would be frickin' astronomical.

You could at the very least bring up specific technolgical areas that you think would be an obstacle but instead you choose to talk about "t'internets" and accuse me of 'hand-waving'?! That's rich.

I have done but you ignore it. Security. How are these networks to be secured? how are we to know that each vote is coming from its rightful voter? Hoe do we prevent fraud? Make records transparent? How do we protect this system from terrorism (it seems to me that if your mysterious tech system was attacked and even temporarily disabled, there would be no government of any kind!)? When I ask these kinds of serious question, you ignore them or simply refuse to answer.

You have no argument.

Mutate and Survive

"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

1) Who decides what gets voted on?2) You do understand that true democracy is at least as much about representation and accountability as it is about simple majority rule don't you? How do you give minority points of view a voice that isn't just completely drowned out by the majority in your system?3) How do you ensure 'one person one vote' rather than powerful employers or whatever dictating the votes of others en masse?4) Is the fickle, emotional and unconsidered rule of the X Factor/Big Brother/Britains Got Talent/American Idol/whatever voting mob the best way to make decisions pertaining to complex social and diplomatic issues in your opinion?5) Is there never a need for unpopular decisions to be made? Your system doesn't seem to cope with this need very well at all.

This is an interesting video Hyro, albeit in a an Early Learning Centre kind of way, but the democracy it's talking about isn't the democracy I'm talking about, it isn't democracy as initially practiced and as the word itself implies. What this video calls 'democracy' is essentially Ochlocracy, i.e. mob rule without constraints. The fact is that Democracy does indeed have checks and balances, e.g. ancient Athens had some basic form of Constitution and a lottery-drawn representative Council which could issue decrees on its own in accordance with the constitution.

It's a common misconception that in a Democracy the majority will infringe on minority rights. This is a myth, no more applicable to a Democracy than to the representative Republics of today. A constitution and individual rights are by no means incompatible with a Democracy. That's how the myth probably originated:

quote:

There's a theory that the word demokratia was coined by democracy's enemies, members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common herd, their social and economic inferiors. If this theory is right, democracy must originally have meant something like 'mob rule' or 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

Living in a democracy doesn't pose any more risk -in this day and age- of mob rule than living in a republic . In fact, a non-proportional voting system (as most western Republics employ today) ensures that minority votes are never heard.

In the UK government currently has the support of around 30% of the populace. So they continue to make decisions -and will continue to do so till the next election- which are unsupported by the majority. In your very own country the electorate has a choice of two (2) ticks on the ballot (three if they're lucky), between parties with very little deviation between their policies and values. You can't surely even entertain the idea that these two parties (three with the odd independent) fully represent the minorities of the US! I'm not even going to go into the select clique of corporations who (thanks to your system of government) ensure that minority rights are constantly trampled upon in favour of corporate capital gain.

So yes, if you really care about minority rights you should be favouring a Democracy, where *everyone* has a voice.

P.S It's no coincidence that many of the Founding Fathers who so vividly criticise democracy (as per your video), were Freemasons, a system that is emphatically and inherently un-democratic. So it's no suprise they went for a representative Republic where the decisions and made by a select few on behalf of the many!

Edited by Legend, : spelling

"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Unfortunately, the more secular the schools become, the more delinquency, crime, suicide, drug abuse, civil unrest etc we have. Interestingly, that's what the Bible predicted would happen, that things would get worse when the precepts were not applied. History attests to that.

This is, of course, complete and utter nonsense, albeit an popular bit of nonsense among conservatives. It has nothing to do with facts. Let's take alcohol consumption, for example:

quote:Drink was everywhere in early America. “Liquor at that time,” recalled the Massachusetts carpenter Elbridge Boyden, “was used as commonly as the food we ate.” Americans drank in enormous quantities. Their yearly consumption at the time of the Revolution has been estimated at the equivalent of three-and-a-half gallons of pure, two-hundred proof alcohol for each person. After 1790 American men began to drink even more. By the late 1820s imbibing had risen to an all-time high of almost four gallons per capita.

There is no real quality of life measure that I can think of - life expectancy, crime rates, literacy, child mortality, poverty - that justifies the claim that "things were so much better when we were a more Christian nation." As a matter of fact, research shows that there is a significant corrolation between how religious a society is and how low the quality of life is for those who life there.

quote:Dr Rees also confirmed that, “more religious nations have more indicators of social disharmony, with lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, higher murder rates, more corruption, and a higher number of abortions. They also scored worse on the Global Peace index, that is, they are less peaceful both internally and in their external relations. What’s more, the research shows that nations with high levels of belief in God, Hell and the Devil ('passionate dualism') have higher murder rates.

So please don't try to assert that lack of school prayer had led this or any other country to ruin. And by the way, it wasn't prayer in school that was disallowed anyway. Kids are still perfectly free to pray in school whenever they want, as long it's not disruptive. It's only mandatory, school-sponsored prayer in public schools that got tossed out.

In a representative democracy, my one vote goes towards the person I feel is most qualified to make the important decisions they will be called upon to make during their term. Through the political process, hacks that clearly have no experience are (usually, apart from Sarah Palin) eliminated in the early going.

Surely, you are jesting! Sarah Palin is but the tip of the iceberg. GW Bush, Reagan, R.Nixon to name but a few at the very top. In a representative democracy, idiotic hacks can gain power as long as they have the money and connections to advertise and market themselves.

In direct democracy, the laws of the land rest in the hands of everyone equally, no matter how educated, qualified, informed, or cognizant they are.

Aboslutely. In a representative democracy the laws of the land rest in the hands of the few, whose motivation and intents are not always benign or even obvious.

Do you really want major decisions made by the general public in the fashion of direct democracy?

Yes. Just make sure you don't confuse (direct) democracy with ochlocracy.

Do you really think it would matter if we each (all 300+ million in the case of the USA for example) got our 1 minute to comment?

Matter to whom? To the 299.9 million who never get a chance to have a say, then yes it would definitely matter.

Do you really think that anyone (let alone everyone, and it is everyone who decides after all) could read and absorb all those comments, and be able to fairly take on-board the viewpoints across the continuum and come to a conclusion from such?

No, nobody could absorb all of them. But many would be absorbed (as opposed to practically none currently) and trends among popular opinion would be easily discerned and they would have to be considered (as everybody votes, remember?). It would be a huge improvevent on the current situation.

Do you really think enough people would vote for a tax increase to pay for something "on the other side of town"? (especially when things on their side of town need work)

Many civic-minded people would. But even if they didn't, people "on the other side of the town" would. In any case, I don't see a task such as local tax allocation and funding being done by national popular vote, it's an administartive task rather than an executive one and -at best- would merit a local referendum.

Do you really think a majority could ever be achieved on important issues? What would you do with the likely 51/49 result on abortion? Would you declare the 51% side the winner, thus forcing this ruling on 49% of your population, all based on a vote that could go 51/49 the other way the very next day?

Naturally, majority thresholds should be set sufficiently high in order to avoid such dilemmas. Now, have a guess as to how the decision for where to set the majority threshold should be taken.

Do you really think that it would be wise to implement a system in which the many people who are uneducated on particular matters get votes equivalent to those who are informed and in a position to make wiser choices? (by using representatives we try to take this problem out of the formula).

You seem to be under the illusion that:A) people who stand for election are educated, skilled or knowledgeable in fields related to their area of government.B) that voters vote for representatives who they think are educated, skilled or knowledgeable in fields related to their area of government.

Alas, if that was the case GW Bush would have never made it even as a Governor, let alone President.

Do you really think it would be wise to implement a system in which there is no-one to hold accountable after the fact, no-one to vote out of office in the next term

Holding someone accountable adds no value to society other than removing one single potential source of incompetence and/or finding a scapegoat. In the latter case it's actually counter-productive as it ensures that we don't learn from mistakes, which we have now atoned for with the scapegoat. If, on the other hand, the public make the wrong decision then there's no-one to blame but the public itself, it's collective responsibility and this is how society learns, improves and matures rather than some sanctimonious finger-pointing and blame-storming.

I think not sir. I think the prospect of direct democracy, if applied to decisions on anything more important than the American Idol or X-Factor winner, would be disastrous.

American Idol and X-Factor are *NOT* examples of democracy, they are examples of ochlocracy! Democracy is allowing the totality of citizens to make collective decisions after careful debate, NOT about who's going to shout the loudest or ring most times!

"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Alas, if that was the case GW Bush would have never made it even as a Governor, let alone President.

Then you would expect the voters to be more educated, skilled or knowledgeable in voting for laws? A number of years ago there was a local referendum, I don't recall the particulars, but the jist was that a measure that had been passed by the legislature was challenged by a citizen's group and they gathered enough signatures to get it on the ballot. The problem was the wording of the referendum a yes vote was in favor of rejecting the bill while a no vote kept the measure on the books. A large number of voters thought they were keeping the bill by voting yes, even a teacher who taught civics.

There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002

Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969

Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

First, I've been curious about your name - are you a Puerto Rican living in Britain? Since its brit-e-rican. Or is it brit-erican, as in Brit and American?

Now to my cynical opinion of your post - lol.

I haven't had a chance to fully read all the posts, but I read this one and Legend's post that you responded to. I'm not in favor of either position, yet, but I'd like to point a few things out and perhaps you may like to debate it.

Through the political process, hacks that clearly have no experience are (usually, apart from Sarah Palin) eliminated in the early going.

Does Dan Quayle ring a bell? There is no way of eliminating incompetence in politics, it is always done in hindsight. Unfortunately, the general public (or rather, the voting public, which is about 35% of the US) is unaware, or been made apathetic, due to the ability of the hacks to properly campaign and control information.

The political process is sadly a joke if you are trying to weed out hacks.

the laws of the land rest in the hands of everyone equally, no matter how educated, qualified, informed, or cognizant they are.

And yet, it is these uneducated, unqualified, uninformed people who are left responsible to vote and elect their officials? Boy, it must be easy to blindly lead this bewilldered herd where you want them to, is it not?

There is a great effort taken to make sure the general public is uneducated, uninformed and unqualified - the privileged elites have seen to it that this is the status quo.

I'm not advocating for Legend's idea, yet, however more of an effort to educate and inform the general public should be made. But it won't be made as long as the elite few are in control of the information - the media.

One of the biggest threats to the status quo is an informed society, but distractions keep us entertain and dumbed down. So, people like yourself and others have no confidence in the general public, yet feel more comfortable following the orders of people who, when are not on the job, are also part of the general public. Point is, we are all capable, we're just not all privileged as others.

And we/you are indoctrinated into a system the maintains this level of deception.

Do you really want major decisions made by the general public in the fashion of direct democracy?

Not with the current state of how our media and information is controlled - it would be stupid to think otherwise, so on this we agree. If this was radically changed however, then I see no reason why any human being couldn't be capable of making proper decisions about their lives.

Politicians are just as stupid as anyone else, they just act like they aren't. However, if properly educated, any one of us can be politically knowledgable enough to assess any issue.

Think of how unions work.

Do you really think that it would be wise to implement a system in which the many people who are uneducated on particular matters get votes equivalent to those who are informed and in a position to make wiser choices?

We are still talking about biological organisms, right?

First thing any good system, that has the people in mind needs to do, is figure out why people are uneducated and uniformed in particular matters. If you find that the system of informing people (ie. the mainstream media) is corrupted and placating to special intrests groups, then this is the first thing that needs to get corrected.

And in the future, people won't refer to the general public as uninformed, uneducated simple-minded individuals who are incapable of making proper decisions for their communities.

Do you really think it would be wise to implement a system in which there is no-one to hold accountable after the fact

I think not sir. I think the prospect of direct democracy, if applied to decisions on anything more important than the American Idol or X-Factor winner, would be disastrous.

It's sad to see people hold politicians in a higher catagory than their fellow citizens.

Not that I disagree with you, but I see many reasons why the public is left to decide on American Idol - rather than on political affairs - that have everything to do with the way the system is run by the elite few who are selling our country out from under us, rather than the inability of human beings to learn.

I recommend, not only a healthy dose of psilocybin magic mushrooms, but also for you and others to watch Manufacturing Consent.

I'm not sure, but it sounds like you are trying to make government work better.

If so, that's a terrible idea!

That government is best which governs the least

-- Jefferson

The purpose of this huge bureacratic monstrosity we keep growing, is to take the people who want to rule us and act like busybodies running other people's lives, and tie them up in red tape so it takes them the most effort to get things done with a good long amount of leeway to step up and stop them if we need to.

The reason we don't go with plain anarchy is because, if we did, those people would still be around doing the same stuff only without rules to bind them with. The sort of people who become policemen need more regulation that the rest of us, not less. The sort of people who sit on councils can't be trusted to get real jobs done. Stop them, don't help them. Please.

I am not an Anarchist in your sense of the word: your brain is too dense for any known explosive to affect it.

I am not an Anarchist in your sense of the word: fancy a Policeman let loose on Society!

While there exists the burgess, the hunting man, or any man with ideals less than Shelley's and self-discipline less than Loyola's -- in short, any man who falls far short of MYSELF -- I am against Anarchy, and for Feudalism.

I don't think so, it was the fault of reading into the question. What the measure attempted was to reverse a bill thus a yes vote was to eliminate the bill and it was worded that way.

Fair enough. But what are you essentially getting at? Surely you're not claiming that politicians are better at reading? Perhaps the way Bills are written requires a certain level of knowledge, just as say reading a prescription, but it's not something that either can be re-worded to normal dialogue or taught, right?